Surreal Madrid etc

Real Madrid's 0-4 calamity at Alcorcan, a wee club from the suburbs of the same city, is my highlight of the week. Oh to have been an ADA fan that night! Here's the awesome fortress of the Santo Domingo (cap. 4,000) and the Real lineup that made history: Dudek; Arbeloa, Albiol, Metzelder, Drenthe; Diarra, Guti (Gago 46'), Van der Vaart, Granero (Marcelo 63'); Raúl (Van Nistelrooy 72'), Benzema.

Marlon King's career looks doomed after being jailed today for 18 months for a violent sexual assault. The court revealed the Wigan striker has 13 previous convictions, including assaulting two women in 2003 and striking another in 2006. I encountered King off-field several times at Watford and always found him polite and self-effacing; never aggressive, boastful or a 'lad'. A female journalist friend of mine knows him well and says he has never been anything but a gentleman to her too, yet these crimes are horrific...I can only wonder if King's prison library stocks 'The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde'.

Gianni Petrucci, Italy's Olympic Committee chief, was unwise to attack England for inventing soccer violence and for the 1985 Heysel disaster, a petulant retaliation for Fabio Capello's perfectly reasonable observation that ultras wield too much power over Serie A, while elsewhere the fans know their place. England has invented many things including football hooliganism, which, like the game itself, Italy has improved on.

Italian soccer writer Gabriele Marcotti advocates 60-minute matches...In the words of programme editors when they print a controversial letter, 'What do other readers think?'

Former Eire striker Tony Cascarino says the EPL is killing lower leagues...you don't say! But he paints a bit too bleak a picture - following a team from the 7th to 5th national division and in long FA Cup runs was the most fun I've ever had as a club fan. Imagine Alcorcan with crap weather.

Brian Clough lasted a famous 44 days at Leeds United. Will a book as good as 'The Damned United' now be written about Juande Ramos' crazy 47-day tenure at CSKA Moscow?

You are the Ref was a staple of the soccer mags I read as a child - Shoot! and Match. Now revived by The Guardian, it's good revision for those who profess to know the game.

My favourite band A-ha have called it quits, shortly after professing love for Stoke City...

-Sean O'Conor, London